Excuses abound after Obama escorts Biden offstage following another apparent display of decrepitude

President Joe Biden was downtown Los Angeles Saturday evening raising money, but once again, he managed to raise concern about his cognitive decline.

A Quinnipiac University poll found earlier this year that the super-majority of likely voters think Biden is too old to effectively serve another term as president. If re-elected, he would conclude his term at the age of 86 — roughly twelve years higher than the average life expectancy for the American man. According to a Rasmussen Reports survey conducted late last month, concerns over the 81-year-old Democrat's decrepitude have not gone away, with 57% of likely voters indicating that Biden's mental decline was worsening.

Biden has, after all, provided his critics with plenty of fodder in recent weeks and years, evidencing difficulty completing sentences despite leaning into his heavy reliance on cue cards; struggling to stay upright; repeating himself and telling the same debunked anecdote twice over, nearly word for word and in short succession; mistaking the living for the dead and his sister for his wife; confusing the names of disparate nations; spending roughly 40% of his presidency out of office; and showcasing difficulties controlling his temper.

On Saturday, Biden was joined by former President Barack Obama and a handful of professional script readers, including George Clooney, Jimmy Kimmel, Jason Bateman, and Julia Roberts, at the Peacock Theater, where they raised over $30 million for his re-election campaign, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Democratic mega donor Jeffrey Katzenberg, a cochair of Biden's re-election campaign, hyped the event in advance, noting, "The enthusiasm and commitment for Biden-Harris couldn't be stronger. We all understand this is the most important election of our lifetime."

'Obama then grabs Biden's hand to lead him offstage.'

With Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom (Calif.) and other leftist lawmakers looking on, Biden, fresh off visiting his criminally convicted son, once again recycled the false claim that former President Donald Trump advised people to inject bleach during the pandemic as well as the false flag narrative concerning Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. He also likened Trump to Julius Caesar, a politician assassinated by a cabal of other politicians.

After Biden and Obama finished their seated interview with Kimmel, the two stood for applause. Footage shared by Chris Gardner of the Hollywood Reporter shows Biden frozen in place with his hand raised in what appears to be a halted wave. After a pregnant moment, he pivots slightly into another static pose, at which point his predecessor grabs his wrist and gently escorts him offstage.

Gardner noted in his caption, "Barack Obama and President Joe Biden offer final waves to Peacock Theater crowd as Obama then grabs Biden's hand to lead him offstage following 40-minute conversation with Jimmy Kimmel."

Multitudes of users on X expressed pity and concern over the president's apparent decline. Piers Morgan, among them, wrote, "So embarrassing. The Democrats can't let this go on, surely?"

Biden boosters desperately attempted to spin this latest apparent signal of decrepitude caught on video as a hoax.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates was especially prickled by the New York Post's description of the incident, tweeting, "Fresh off being fact checked by at least 6 mainstream outlets for lying about @POTUS with cheap fakes, Rupert Murdoch's sad little super pac, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting it's readers & itself once again. Their ethical standards could deal with a little unfreezing."

Bates appears to have been referencing recent reports indicating that Biden confusedly wandered off at the G7 summit in Apulia, Italy, during a parachute exercise and that he also locked up at the White House's Juneteenth event — both of which were caught on camera.

Gun-control activist David Hogg claimed the Saturday video seen by millions of people "did not happen and is a total lie," prompting a "like" from Democratic propagandist Mark Hamill.

'They think you're stupid.'

Ukrainian blogger Olga Nesterova shared heavily edited footage of the final moments of the event, presenting an alternative account of what supposedly happened.

Biden "influencer" Harry Sisson noted, "MAGA IS LYING AGAIN. The new lie is that Biden had to be 'led off stage' by Obama and that he 'froze' but that is COMPLETELY FALSE! This video shows what actually happened and is not some selectively edited garbage. The lies don’t stop from MAGA."

Whereas the Hollywood Reporter video was apparently uncut, Sisson elected to share the heavily edited version shared by Nesterova.

RNC Research tweeted, "Don't believe your LYING EYES, the Biden White House says. Didn't happen! He's TOTALLY WITH IT, his incompetent stooges say — you just never get to see it. They think you're stupid."

The Washington Post and the Daily Beast are among the liberal publications that joined Obama in coming to Biden's rescue. The Post, which has struggled with the truth in recent years, claimed, "The use of these clips is an especially pernicious couple of examples of manipulated video — what we label 'isolation' under our guide to manipulated video — because it's intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred. The RNC and its avid followers in the conservative media earn Four Pinocchios."

Self-guided or not, Biden's disapproval rating sits at 58% according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll. His approval rating, alternatively, was 40%; 54% of respondents said that Biden's health and age will "severely limit his ability to do the job" if re-elected; 25% said they would have "little effect on his ability to do his job." Only 11% said they would have no impact at all.

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